6 ms·

This is why tax avoidance is a bad thing. Governments can accelerate innovation with stimulations like this.

markkanof 5y ago
Looks like DARPA's budget is about 3.5 billion a year vs. the overall defense budget of something like 715 billion. I'm betting that a lot more people would feel ok about paying taxes if more of it was going towards these types of projects rather than empire building in far away parts of the world.
- 1cvmask 5y ago
  The defense budget is in fact over 1.25 trillion dollars in real terms. We just don’t count it like most other countries. For example nuclear weapons are under the Department of Energy. https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2019/05/making-sense-of-the-1-25-trillion-national-security-state-budget/ https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2019/05/making-sense-of-the-1-... https://tomdispatch.com/hartung-and-smithberger-a-dollar-by-dollar-tour-of-the-national-security-state/ https://tomdispatch.com/hartung-and-smithberger-a-dollar-by-...
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    Yeah, but a vast amount of healthcare is under the DoD in America while it wouldn’t be in other countries.
- gnulinux 5y ago
  Right, so we need both. Defund the military, make sure rich people still pay their fair amount of taxes, and use that money to invest in science, education, healthcare, education etc.
  - b9a2cab5 5y ago
    Defunding the military has real impacts. Those free trade deals that lower the cost of goods for average people don't just magically get signed, generally U.S. military presence is also a part of the deal. More generally if the U.S. loses global hegemony then so does the dollar, and a mass exodus from the dollar as foreign reserve would cause rampant inflation as demand for dollars crashes. The geopolitical situation is more complicated than just "defund the military". You can see both the current and past administration are trying to get other countries to pay more for the U.S. presence, which is a form of slow withdrawal of U.S. power, so I think they recognize that there is a need to redirect funds, but I don't think you can just outright leave in a year.
- demadog 5y ago
  The U.S. isn't empire building. It's mainly a policy of retaining superpower status for world peace. Containment of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea is largely the defining policy of the last 70 years. Of course tons of blunders like Vietnam and Afghanistan. Tragedies. But there has not been a World War III nor have there been large scale wars killing a sizable portion of the populace such as most wars pre-WWII. For further evidence that the U.S. isn't interested in empire building is the fact that in wars over the last 70 years, the U.S. hasn't gained land and tried to turn the countries into vassal states like in classical European wars or like USSR did. The U.S. aims to build allies not an empire.
  - NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
    > But there has not been a World War III nor have there been large scale wars killing a sizable portion of the populace such as most wars pre-WWII. This is as much if not more of a result of Mutually Assured Destruction due to nuclear weapons. Humanity finally built something so destructive we had to collectively choose not to use it because the only way to win that game is not to play it. Now it's all proxy wars, cyber 'wars', and trade 'wars'. >For further evidence that the U.S. isn't interested in empire building is the fact that in wars over the last 70 years, the U.S. hasn't gained land and tried to turn the countries into vassal states like in classical European wars or like USSR did. The U.S. aims to build allies not an empire. This much I agree with.
    - atatatat 5y ago
      Less HONEST wars. Tell people exactly why they're dying again, see how many SpecOps get fucking cancelled.
  - vasco 5y ago
    The U.S. isn't creating vassal states because that wouldn't fly with the current zeitgeist, because it'd allienate the EU and other current friendly countries which buy a lot of crap from US companies. Keeping the USD as the base currency of the world is the most important thing. When the a country owns the de-facto base currency it can print it's way into prosperity, having the most powerful army assures that everyone will respect that the pieces of paper you print are worth something. This way you can get yourself out of trouble any time it arrises by printing your way out of it. Inflation then comes and your debts are now easier to repay. Meanwhile all the schmuck countries holding your debt can't do much about it, since you're the only one that can print USD. Keeping those countries close and doing trade is way better than a few extra official vassal states, when you can instead just get most of the profits without any of the hassle of actually having to manage a remote piece of land. Why have all that trouble when you can sell your current_gen-2 weapon systems to most countries on earth with loads of profit? Plus they can't ever go to war against you because you'll just stop supplying them. I'm very pro-US myself but to think that this "benevolent world management" stance is just out of the kindness of the US government's heart seems a bit naive. It's subtle empire building, but it's still empire building. I for one don't mind, because I think out of the options there are, the US definitely isn't the worse choice.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  Defense is business in an abstract sense. DaaS is desirable for many nations instead of building domestic capability which would be far worse due to scale/reinventing-the-wheel. Look up US defense treaties with various nations across the world - this is a mutual agreement in exchange for IP, defense sales, assurance and guarantees, soft power, etc.
vmception 5y ago
US government would never balance its budget even if tax compliance was 100% and the tax rate was 100%. The math does not check out and the taxes fund nothing except the interest payments on international debt. The things that were going to get funded will still get funded, because they are funded by the debt issuance and the continued market tolerance for US government debt issuances. So, no, tax avoidance has practically nothing to do with this. The "roads and schools [and innovations]" argument is particularly weak, because whatever wasn't funded was never going to get funded. The only limit to budget allocations is the market tolerance of the debt and currency. So again - since that market tolerance is extremely vast and expansive given the lack of liquid alternatives - if it wasn't funded, it wasn't going to get funded.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > only limit to budget allocations is the market tolerance of the debt and currency Sovereign debt buyers and FX traders strongly consider a states' ability to collect taxes.
  - vmception 5y ago
    more aptly: the ability of the state to pay its interest now and in the future. the state is in a balance to avoid a death spiral of its currency: creating more because it purchases less due to market selloff of the currency. the main point is that it is highly leveraged and tax collection is merely servicing a small single digit percentage of the capital, and therefore the further sliver from tax avoidance is having even tinier percentage of an effect on how what the budget is and could be. the state also has other revenue sources.
hencq 5y ago
This is exactly the argument made by Mariana Mazzucato in The Entrepreneurial State. It argues that the state is a major driver of innovation. DARPA is a great example of that. It argues that governments should be receiving some of the returns that private companies make because of this innovation. E.g. Apple makes enormous amounts of money selling iPhones that is full of technology like GPS, Internet, etc. that wouldn't be possible without the state as a driver of innovation. It seems fair that they get a share of those earnings in return.
golergka 5y ago
Tax avoidance is a moral responsibility, because violence or threat of violence is morally wrong regardless of the outcome.
paxys 5y ago
$25 million went to research that produced a life-saving vaccine and averted (or at least abated) a global crisis. Meanwhile the F-35 program at a lifetime cost of $1.7 trillion has produced basically nothing. People's biggest criticism of taxation is all the government corruption and wastage that it enables, and IMO that is completely valid.

Looks like DARPA's budget is about 3.5 billion a year vs. the overall defense budget of something like 715 billion. I'm betting that a lot more people would feel ok about paying taxes if more of it was going towards these types of projects rather than empire building in far away parts of the world.

1cvmask 5y ago
The defense budget is in fact over 1.25 trillion dollars in real terms. We just don’t count it like most other countries. For example nuclear weapons are under the Department of Energy. https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2019/05/making-sense-of-the-1-25-trillion-national-security-state-budget/ https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2019/05/making-sense-of-the-1-... https://tomdispatch.com/hartung-and-smithberger-a-dollar-by-dollar-tour-of-the-national-security-state/ https://tomdispatch.com/hartung-and-smithberger-a-dollar-by-...
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Yeah, but a vast amount of healthcare is under the DoD in America while it wouldn’t be in other countries.
gnulinux 5y ago
Right, so we need both. Defund the military, make sure rich people still pay their fair amount of taxes, and use that money to invest in science, education, healthcare, education etc.
- b9a2cab5 5y ago
  Defunding the military has real impacts. Those free trade deals that lower the cost of goods for average people don't just magically get signed, generally U.S. military presence is also a part of the deal. More generally if the U.S. loses global hegemony then so does the dollar, and a mass exodus from the dollar as foreign reserve would cause rampant inflation as demand for dollars crashes. The geopolitical situation is more complicated than just "defund the military". You can see both the current and past administration are trying to get other countries to pay more for the U.S. presence, which is a form of slow withdrawal of U.S. power, so I think they recognize that there is a need to redirect funds, but I don't think you can just outright leave in a year.
demadog 5y ago
The U.S. isn't empire building. It's mainly a policy of retaining superpower status for world peace. Containment of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea is largely the defining policy of the last 70 years. Of course tons of blunders like Vietnam and Afghanistan. Tragedies. But there has not been a World War III nor have there been large scale wars killing a sizable portion of the populace such as most wars pre-WWII. For further evidence that the U.S. isn't interested in empire building is the fact that in wars over the last 70 years, the U.S. hasn't gained land and tried to turn the countries into vassal states like in classical European wars or like USSR did. The U.S. aims to build allies not an empire.
- NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
  > But there has not been a World War III nor have there been large scale wars killing a sizable portion of the populace such as most wars pre-WWII. This is as much if not more of a result of Mutually Assured Destruction due to nuclear weapons. Humanity finally built something so destructive we had to collectively choose not to use it because the only way to win that game is not to play it. Now it's all proxy wars, cyber 'wars', and trade 'wars'. >For further evidence that the U.S. isn't interested in empire building is the fact that in wars over the last 70 years, the U.S. hasn't gained land and tried to turn the countries into vassal states like in classical European wars or like USSR did. The U.S. aims to build allies not an empire. This much I agree with.
  - atatatat 5y ago
    Less HONEST wars. Tell people exactly why they're dying again, see how many SpecOps get fucking cancelled.
- vasco 5y ago
  The U.S. isn't creating vassal states because that wouldn't fly with the current zeitgeist, because it'd allienate the EU and other current friendly countries which buy a lot of crap from US companies. Keeping the USD as the base currency of the world is the most important thing. When the a country owns the de-facto base currency it can print it's way into prosperity, having the most powerful army assures that everyone will respect that the pieces of paper you print are worth something. This way you can get yourself out of trouble any time it arrises by printing your way out of it. Inflation then comes and your debts are now easier to repay. Meanwhile all the schmuck countries holding your debt can't do much about it, since you're the only one that can print USD. Keeping those countries close and doing trade is way better than a few extra official vassal states, when you can instead just get most of the profits without any of the hassle of actually having to manage a remote piece of land. Why have all that trouble when you can sell your current_gen-2 weapon systems to most countries on earth with loads of profit? Plus they can't ever go to war against you because you'll just stop supplying them. I'm very pro-US myself but to think that this "benevolent world management" stance is just out of the kindness of the US government's heart seems a bit naive. It's subtle empire building, but it's still empire building. I for one don't mind, because I think out of the options there are, the US definitely isn't the worse choice.
systemvoltage 5y ago
Defense is business in an abstract sense. DaaS is desirable for many nations instead of building domestic capability which would be far worse due to scale/reinventing-the-wheel. Look up US defense treaties with various nations across the world - this is a mutual agreement in exchange for IP, defense sales, assurance and guarantees, soft power, etc.

vmception 5y ago

US government would never balance its budget even if tax compliance was 100% and the tax rate was 100%. The math does not check out and the taxes fund nothing except the interest payments on international debt. The things that were going to get funded will still get funded, because they are funded by the debt issuance and the continued market tolerance for US government debt issuances. So, no, tax avoidance has practically nothing to do with this. The "roads and schools [and innovations]" argument is particularly weak, because whatever wasn't funded was never going to get funded. The only limit to budget allocations is the market tolerance of the debt and currency. So again - since that market tolerance is extremely vast and expansive given the lack of liquid alternatives - if it wasn't funded, it wasn't going to get funded.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> only limit to budget allocations is the market tolerance of the debt and currency Sovereign debt buyers and FX traders strongly consider a states' ability to collect taxes.
- vmception 5y ago
  more aptly: the ability of the state to pay its interest now and in the future. the state is in a balance to avoid a death spiral of its currency: creating more because it purchases less due to market selloff of the currency. the main point is that it is highly leveraged and tax collection is merely servicing a small single digit percentage of the capital, and therefore the further sliver from tax avoidance is having even tinier percentage of an effect on how what the budget is and could be. the state also has other revenue sources.

hencq 5y ago

This is exactly the argument made by Mariana Mazzucato in The Entrepreneurial State. It argues that the state is a major driver of innovation. DARPA is a great example of that. It argues that governments should be receiving some of the returns that private companies make because of this innovation. E.g. Apple makes enormous amounts of money selling iPhones that is full of technology like GPS, Internet, etc. that wouldn't be possible without the state as a driver of innovation. It seems fair that they get a share of those earnings in return.

golergka 5y ago

Tax avoidance is a moral responsibility, because violence or threat of violence is morally wrong regardless of the outcome.

paxys 5y ago

$25 million went to research that produced a life-saving vaccine and averted (or at least abated) a global crisis. Meanwhile the F-35 program at a lifetime cost of $1.7 trillion has produced basically nothing. People's biggest criticism of taxation is all the government corruption and wastage that it enables, and IMO that is completely valid.